Samuel Prasad, Ph.D.

2012 Technology Predictions

There are three things in life that are certain - death, taxes and the crystal ball dropping in Times Square (New York City) on New Year's Eve. Truth be told, I did not really see the ball drop this year because the TV channel that my wife and I were watching got to the ball only after it had slid almost to the bottom of the pole. Anyway this is a good time to peer into the crystal ball and make a few predictions for 2012. While most of the experts seem to be fixated on the number 10, I'll limit my predictions to THREE. Here they are:

1. THE SMART PHONE REPLACES YOUR WALLET AND YOUR ID

NFC (near field communication) equipped smart phones will be widely available in the U.S. through most of the major carriers before the end of 2012. How does NFC work? The technology behind NFC uses inductive coupling to transfer data between two NFC-equipped devices when they are within a few centimeters of each other. Europe is way ahead of us in the use of NFC-equipped smart phones as a payment method and for identification purposes. The customer just taps the phone at the POS register instead of swiping a credit card. This method of payment is quite secure because of two-factor authentication which requires the customer to key in a PIN or through biometric scanning of the customer's fingerprint. Multiple credit cards, store cards, loyalty cards and bank accounts can be linked to a single NFC phone which means that a wallet full of cards is on its way to becoming obsolete.

The ability of a smart phone to display 2-D bar codes or other visual tags will increasingly be used in lieu of boarding passes at airports, driver's licenses and other forms of paper identification. NFC phones used in conjunction with two-factor identification eliminates many of the problems with stolen IDs and credit cards.

By the year 2015, at least 30% of the people will be "wallet-less".
 

2. ENTERPRISES STAY AWAY FROM THE PUBLIC CLOUD

Companies will continue to stay away from the public cloud because of security concerns. Security in the public cloud is still very elusive. According to Vivek Wadhwa, a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek and the Washington Post, "Cloud computing provides significant cost savings and operational advantages. But it also unleashes a Pandora’s box of security concerns. We’ve already seen cloud break-ins originating from China. And a number of legitimate Internet companies have suffered when the FBI confiscated a shared server in a cloud hosting facility that also hosted rogue applications."

A "public cloud" means that a company's applications and data are hosted on servers and networks that are outside the company's firewall managed by a third-party, which means that the company has to rely on the cloud service provider to safeguard the company's application and data. The public cloud will still gain popularity among start-ups for testing new products because of the cost benefits it provides.

Hybrid Clouds are beginning to emerge, but I am not sure if they will be able to address all the security concerns adequately. What are hybrid clouds? They are a combination of public and private clouds where some of the company's software and/or data resides on the public cloud and some on its private cloud which is essentially the company's internal network.

Cloud service providers have a long way to go before enterprises will entrust their applications and data to the public cloud.

3. THE AGILE MANIFESTO IS ADOPTED BY MORE COMPANIES

The majority of technology projects are behind schedule, over budget and/or does not meet specifications according to the results of a study published earlier this year by "The Standish Group". The primary reason for this high rate of failure is the continuing use of outdated project management methods that rely on a command-and-control approach where most decisions related to design, cost and time are made at the top based on incorrect information. Management is lulled into a false sense of security when they buy into the notion that projects can be executed successfully by creating detailed plans upfront, when many of the parameters and constraints needed to create such plans are yet unknown. We've all heard about the urban myth that a project plan must spell out everything in minute detail including the condition “..in case someone falls under a bus..”.  This is a hangover from the DoD standards. If you are building nuclear reactors it’s a good idea to spell out everything and back-up every decision with a series of checks and signatures. But most of us are not building nuclear reactors, and for management to insist that project plans be created with an excruciating level of detail that is both unnecessary and inaccurate before the project can even start is ludicrous. (see http://www.iso-9001-checklist.co.uk/tutorial/4.2-documentation.htm).

In order to increase the probability that a project will be successful it is my opinion that the only solution is to adopt the "Agile Manifesto". It is refreshing to see that it is being adopted by more and more companies as they realize that traditional project management is just not working. The manifesto for agile software development is as follows:

• "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan."

The twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto are:

• "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
• Working software is the primary measure of progress.
• Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
• Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."

More information about the agile manifesto can be found at http://agilemanifesto.org/.

I believe that companies will have no choice but to adopt agile management processes to not only retain their best talent but also to stay competitive in today's global market.

The Year of BIG DATA

Happy New Year!

"Let this coming year be better than all the others. Vow to do some of the things you've always wanted to do but couldn't find the time. Call up a forgotten friend. Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories. Vow not to make a promise you don't think you can keep. Walk tall, and smile more. You'll look ten years younger." - Ann Landers

Unlike the hundreds of thousands of people who braved the cold and thronged to the crossroads of the world - the heart of Times Square in New York City - to watch the ball drop at the stroke of midnight to usher in 2012, many of us were quite content to sip champagne and watch the events unfold on television from the warmth of our living rooms. Here is an excerpt from an editorial written by me that appeared in the January 2012 issue of The Quality Islander.

The New Year brings with it anticipation of new opportunities. In order to capitalize on these opportunities we need to be able to identify business trends and develop strategies that will deliver products with just the right features, reduce operational costs and improve service to our customers. How do we do this? Very simple! Understand customer behavior. This is where the ability to comprehend "Big Data” becomes critical for businesses to stay competitive and profitable.  IBM defines big data as the "2.5 quintillion (2.5 followed by 18 zeroes) bytes of data we create every day from sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and cell phone GPS signals, to name a few. Ninety percent of this data has been created in the last two years alone."

I have spent much of last year working with big data. Until a year ago it was only the Internet companies who were interested in analyzing big data comprised mostly of click stream information to better understand the visitors to their web sites so that they can deliver advertisements with personalized contents. This type of data analysis, called data mining, is now increasingly being used by many companies including utilities, media companies, hospitals, banks and retailers. For example, utilities have started to mine data to predict customer demand for electric power and monitor the efficiency of the distribution grid. Media companies that deliver programming via the Internet or cable are now able to monitor in real-time the demography of their customers watching their content. This information can be used to develop customized programming at the household level and for targeted marketing.

Unfortunately, as big data grows there is a continuous erosion of our privacy because the results of the analyses of big data, called business intelligence (BI), are increasingly being used to make decisions that affect our everyday lives. BI used by hospitals directly determines the quality and type of medical care delivered to patients. BI used by banks determines the cost at which a customer can borrow money, which implies that not only must big data be clean but also the right metrics and models must be used to analyze big data.  As the volume of big data increases the complexity of the analyses can afford to decrease, according to a Gartner report which says, “Today, data mining is really about building sophisticated models with not very much data. Now, big data gives you huge volumes of data which means that you don’t need as sophisticated a model anymore.”  In other words, the cleanliness, consistency and integrity of data will be at least as important as the level of complexity of the analytical models.  In addition, non-traditional types of databases will be needed to store, classify and quickly access unstructured data from social media.

There are many new technologies scheduled for release this year that will help us better manage and understand big data. In order to stay competitive, companies will do well to carefully evaluate these new technologies for adaptability and scalability to make sure that the technology they choose is aligned with the types of data they collect and the needs of their customers.